I know this forum has been eerily silent for months, but this is something I simply couldn’t not write about (you can either chalk up my double negative as done purely for emphasis, or either because I’m horrendously out of practice). Don’t worry, there are other writings in the works, I’ll get to them soon.
Mississippi House Bill 282, which has been introduced for this year’s legislative session, proposes to prevent anyone who is obsese, as defined by the Mississippi State Dept. of Health, from entering a commercial restuarant that is required to obtain a permit from the State Department of Health (that would pretty much mean all of them).
I predict that in 2009, whatever asshat proposed this legislation will scribble on a cocktail napkin while half drunk a piece of legislation that makes it illegal for drowning victims to get near water fountains.
Since for some reason, we’re still not clear on this whole “freedom” thing, let’s try this again: We all, every single one of us (and yes, for you Republicans out there, this includes more than just rich white land owners, but also Muslims, African Americans, Latinos, and others that you may classify as “unsavories”) has an inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, unless it infringes on another’s right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. As part of our freedoms, we are allowed to define what the Pursuit of the Happiness means for us individually.
Let’s talk about what this freedom means for a moment. Dan Carlin of the podcast Common Sense talked about recently that the right to swing my fist ends where my neighbor’s nose begins. In other words, my freedom is limited when there is direct, substantial harm to another. This is the old yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater argument. Let’s make sure that we all understand that this is a fine, unmoving line, that must be clearly understood, because both the “I can do or say anything I want” crowds, and the “You can’t say anything if it has any negative impact ever” crowds use these arguments to their whims, with those of us espousing responsible personal freedom are stuck in the middle wondering what happened to sanity.
For a moment, let’s talk about what a causal relationship means in the realm of criminal justice. I always had a problem with the series finale of Seinfeld. As a refresher course, the four friends we’ve come to know and love are in Massachusetts where they witness an obese man being carjacked. Being from New York City, a carjacking is a frequent (if not hourly spectator event), and so this is not anything special. In fact, being New Yorkers, their civic duty is pretty much to stand around and watch. And point. And laugh. A lot.
This apparently violated the Massachusetts “Good Samaritan” law, which supposedly requires people to intervene and help those in need. This never sat right with me. This had to be made up.
Turns out that Massachusetts (and pretty much everywhere else) has a “Good Samaritan” law, but it doesn’t quite work like that. It protects those who intervene from the consequences of their actions. Another counter example would be in the CG animated movie “The Incredibles” where Mr. Incredible is sued by a man who was committing suicide, the lawsuit against the superhero would have been laughed out of the courtroom, and the “Supers” would have gotten to keep going about their superpowered ways, and all thanks to the fact that the U.S. Common Law protects the “Good Samaritan” against superfluous torts like that.
The only case where a “duty to rescue” is required by law is parents of minor children (duh), paid, on-the-clock rescue workers (also duh), and a few other cases that can be summed up under the broad category of “duh”.
Now, to be fair, according to the Wikipedia article on Good Samaritan laws, Massachusetts does have a law on the books requiring individuals witnessing a crime to report it to authorities, and failure to comply is a misdemeanor which carries with a maximum fine of $2500 and no jail time. But there is no law anywhere which requires someone to step in and stop a crime in progress, or save anyone from anything, for a multitude of reasons, the first being that as a free society, we don’t have to step in and expose ourselves to a danger, real or perceived, in order to protect someone else from danger. In fact, we are completely free as a society to simply ignore someone else’s immediate danger.
And what about not-so-immediate danger, from obesity, or lung cancer, or cirrhosis? Is it our responsibility to force someone to put down a cheeseburger if they have a bit of a gut? What about knocking a cigarette out of someone’s mouth if we hear them cough a bit? Maybe take someone’s drink if we think we see a liver spot?
You do this in any restaurant or bar, and you’ll be kicked out. Why? Because you infringed on their rights. Of course, I hear you say “what about drugs?” Of course, my personal mentality when it comes to drugs is that in a country so dedicated to personal freedoms, it should be wholly wrong for the government to tell us what we can and cannot put in our bodies, and that the government’s responsibility ends at educating us on how to maintain our health and how to make an educated decision. Of course, there are plenty of arguments against cooking meth in your kitchen, such as, oh, you know, all of your neighbors faces are melting and you’re slowly contaminating the nearby groundwater. In this case, it’s pretty easy to see that you’re infringing on others rights. But if you were to smoke pot in your bedroom and go to sleep? Whose rights are you infringing? If you were to get behind the wheel of a car and endanger someone else’s life while driving under the influence of mind altering drugs, that’s infringing, but otherwise, there’s no direct, causal effect on anyone else.
And there’s the rub. The Seinfeld 4, as we might call them, weren’t the ones who carjacked that fat guy, and while it would have been nice if they had stepped in and stopped the guy, if he had a gun, or a lethal weapon, what would they have been able to do? Besides, are they police officers? Do they have the training and understanding of how to handle the situation? And what exactly were they supposed to do, say “Stop! Or I’ll say stop again more loudly this time and with a bit more oomph!”
That’s the causal relationship. They didn’t cause the crime, and it’s quite possible that the outcome would have remained the same, or possibly worse, had they intervened. Instead of going after four people who, admittedly, laughed at another’s plight and were for all intents and purposes acting like complete dicks, they should have gone after the actual dick who infringed another’s rights. If being an asshole were illegal, we’d all be in prison.
You can start to see how the law goes the other direction. My right to inaction is also your right to inaction. I am under no obligation to protect you from a carjacker, and in fact, in a free society, there are plenty of reasons why I shouldn’t stop you, but let the proper authorities take the case. Likewise, your doctor can recommend you go on a strict no-cheeseburger diet, but the moment he jabs you with a dose of Haldol, straps you down to the table, and forces a liposuction needle in your abs without you first signing a consent that says something along the lines of “You know, doc, I’d like you to vacuum the fat out of me,” he’s going to jail and losing his license. He cannot stop you from eating that next cheeseburger, nor should he physically prevent you. He can only recommend and educate, and choose what goes into his body.
But sadly, too many on both the Left and the Right have forgotten this personal freedom thing, because they believe that if their taxes go up because I grab a cheeseburger, I have infringed on their rights. In a free society that works towards the greater good, though, this is not infringement. My chances for heart disease and diabetes go up with every cheeseburger I eat, but that’s chance, not certainty, and in a society that has largely decreed that maintaining the overall health of its population is a good thing, are we really willing to sacrifice the pursuit of happiness just so we can save a few pennies per person on Medicare costs? And to top it off, where does this Slippery Slope lead? Nobody would deny that children are expensive, and no matter how wealthy you are, adding a child into the system technically would increase others’ tax costs. For example, if I have a bunch of kids and then send them to public school, I have just increased others’ taxes. For someone who has no children, their taxes go up, through no fault of their own. Say my religion or personal beliefs espouse having lots of children, you know, really taking that whole “go forth, be fruitful, and multiply” clause to heart. Is it really the government’s place to limit how many children I can have “for the greater good?” Should our government go all “China” on us?
The argument, of course, is “what if everyone had 14 children? And what if they all have way to many as well? Think of the population explosion!” Then, we have a situation that has to be addressed at a societal level, through proper planning and redistribution of government benefits (get your mind out of the gutter, welfare detractors, I’m talking about public services). And if you look at it in a certain way, each one of those kiddos can be a contributing taxpaying citizen soon anyway, thus putting back into the system.
